


Sleeping Beauty

by dolores



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-25
Updated: 2010-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-14 21:11:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dolores/pseuds/dolores
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spike is sent on a quest by Drusilla.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleeping Beauty

The scene: the bedroom in a royal palace. It is a grand room garlanded with gold brocade and paper flowers. But it is also neglected and cobwebs hang in the windows untouched for decades.

On a large bed in the centre of the chamber lies a beautiful princess with chestnut hair. She is asleep, hands clasped at her bosom. To one side of the bed stands a handsome prince, paused but leaning forward, the better to kiss his true love and awaken her from a century's slumber.

Then, the diorama is disturbed. A large hand descends from the ceiling and plucks the princess from her bed. Her princely suitor remains immobile, unconcerned that his quarry has been stolen from before his very eyes.

High above, Drusilla twirls the little wooden figure around her head, examining it with wide eyes.

"It's like Daddy," she says, "asleep for all these years."

She turns from the toy theatre to face Spike, who is feasting on the child whose nursery they have disturbed. There is a faint scream that carries to them down the corridor from another room. Darla has found another occupant of the house. A maid, perhaps, or a footman.

Drusilla watches Spike and the prone child for a moment, unconsciously running her tongue across her bottom lip, cocking her head. Then she asks, "Do you think Daddy can be awakened by a kiss?"

Spike tosses the now-dead child back on its bed, swiping a cuff on his chin to catch the line of blood that has trickled there. "I don't know, love. It'd be a poetic solution, wouldn't it?"

He moves closer to Drusilla, who is tucking the figure into a pocket on her dress. He smiles, indulgent, and says, "It appeals to my soul, if you excuse the pun."

Drusilla squeals with delight, clasping her hands to her mouth. Then she reaches out towards Spike until her hands meet his chest. "You must kiss him! You're a handsome prince."

"Me?" He wears a disbelieving look.

Her reply is solemn. "Well, it can't very well be Grandmother or I. We're girls."

Spike rolls his eyes. "I said the solution'd be poetic, not that I wanted to write the bloody verse. I never said I wanted him back at all."

"Oh, but you'd do it for me, wouldn't you? I miss Daddy so." Her eyes are imploring.

He grips her arms. "Dru. We don't even know where he is. But says we do one day -- well, maybe I'd think about it."

She squeals again.

"And after I've placed my lips on his pretty face I can land a fist or two on it, for disgracing us in China like that."

He sees the look on Drusilla's face. "And don't you go getting your hopes up. I somehow doubt that those gypsies made it all that easy for the curse to be lifted."

But she is not listening, and her conviction that this is the solution will not be swayed in the weeks to come.

 

They had returned to a London still in mourning for its Queen, her reign finally coming to an end in January. The newspapers remained gripped with the continuing struggle of the Empire against the Boers in the Cape Colony, whilst Mr Conan Doyle's latest instalment in the 'Sherlock Holmes' series, 'The Hound of the Baskervilles', was gripping Darla. She now killed passing gentlemen for their copy of 'The Strand' as much as for their blood.

Spike did not seek Angelus, not knowing if he were even in the country, or the continent -- but still he turned up like the proverbial bad penny.

The pub in Wapping was dark and grimy, and it smelled of pipesmoke, urine and sweat. The vengeance demon he was meeting was only a passing acquaintance of Spike's, but he'd had enough of female company and wanted to brag to someone who had not been there to witness events and did not know when he was exaggerating.

But he'd barely had the chance to begin to recite the tale of the day he killed a Slayer when D'Marr picked up on a fleeting reference to Drusilla's sire.

"You know Angelus?"

"What? Yeah, well, maybe I do. What's it to you?"

The demon sipped his gin and shrugged. "Little enough. I had heard he was -- diminished, in some way. It sounded like a vengeance curse, and as he is staying in St Johns Wood at present I was considering calling on him. Call it professional curiosity."

"He's in St Johns Wood? Sounds like him, he always did like the fancy end of town."

"I have the address, if you would like it."

Spike paused for a moment.

"I suppose I would."

 

He didn't tell Darla, because she would just kill him. He didn't tell Dru either, 'cause she'd tell Darla, and then Darla would just kill him.

It was better to do this on his own.

It was just a social visit -- his own professional curiosity, he told himself -- and he had no plans to test Dru's little theory. He didn't expect Angelus would give him the opportunity anyway.

Not that Spike wanted him to, of course.

London was, not uncommonly for October, thick with fog and chimney smoke, and visibility was poor even in relatively affluent places like St Johns Wood. Spike struggled through it, only for the air to clear as he came on to Angelus' street. The gaslights still a little hazy but the darkened villa loomed clearly ahead.

The back door was unlocked, and Spike crept in, uncertain as to why he hadn't just rung the bell. The house was quiet except for ticking clocks in the hall and a dripping tap in the scullery. Expensive carpets muffled the sound of Spike's boots as he moved around, examining empty rooms, until on the second floor landing, he reached a door, under which issued a dim light.

He entertained a wild thought that he would enter that room to find a slumbering Angelus, lying shirtless -- no, naked -- on the bed, just as if he was in a licentious fairytale. Then he could lean over and...

At that moment, the door was wrenched open, and he found himself face to face with Angelus. He reflected that he'd been right the first time, and the old man was merely shirtless.

"Spike," said Angelus, who sounded very much like he rather thought Spike may have been the aforementioned bad penny. "What do you want?"

A grin. "I'm here to seduce you. Well, in a manner of speaking."

Angelus clearly found this statement to be somewhat unexpected, and stood, uncertain, just inches away.

Spike's philosophy had always been carpe diem, and carpe Angelus seemed a natural progression. He grabbed Angelus' face with both hands and brought their lips together in a jarring kiss that caused Angelus to stagger backwards and Spike to feel an almost electric buzz that coursed down into his loins.

He wondered if it was just arousal or, in fact, the feeling of magic. They broke off, and a slightly bewildered Angelus took a further step back, swiping his arm across his mouth.

"Feel any different? Back to your old self perhaps?"

Even before Angelus answered, the brooding expression spoke volumes. "No."

"Shame," Spike said. "Dru was convinced it'd do the trick."

 

"Kissing was no use, my love," Spike reported to Drusilla some hours later, in the master bedroom of the townhouse they were using as a base.

She issued a wail of despair and, after fishing the little wooden princess from her pocket, hurled her across the room, then careered off into adjoining chamber, where she began to visit further such destruction on ornaments there.

Darla was applying rouge to her face, sat, for reasons of tradition if not utility, at a mirror. "Perhaps kissing him wasn't enough, William. When they told me the fairy story as a girl the prince did a little more than that when he found her. Those stories were always much more fun in my day."

Spike could still feel the nail marks down his back. They had an erotic sting.

"Oh, I... explored every avenue, don't you worry. So did he, come to that."

Darla raised an eyebrow, as Spike threw himself onto the bed and stretched out.

"Still didn't work, mind you." He sighed. "Bloody stupid really, as if that sort of thing was going to break a gyspy curse. Might as well send seven dwarves around for all the good it'd do."

Drusilla suddenly appeared at the door, her rage forgotten, her eyes shining. "I've never tasted a dwarf before. Find me one, Spike, please? Oh, please!"

Spike sighed. Yet another quest for Prince Charming to complete.


End file.
